2013 Student-Faculty Fellows Program

The summer 2013 ASIANetwork Freeman Student-Faculty Fellows Program is the fifteenth funded by the Freeman Foundation to support collaborative undergraduate research in East and Southeast Asia. Over $386,000 will be allocated to fifteen faculty mentors and fifty-two undergraduate students in teams numbering from three and eight individuals. They will conduct research in Cambodia, China (five teams), Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore & Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand (three teams). Among this group are four colleges never before funded through this program (Concordia College, MN., Hanover College, IN., LeMoyne College, NY., and University of Louisville, KY) bringing the number of colleges funded in this program to 102. Counting those supported during this funding cycle, the total number of grants given during the past fifteen years is 185, and the total number of “Student-Faculty Fellows” now comes to 838.

ASIANetwork is grateful to the Freeman Foundation for its continued commitment to this program, and also to the faculty mentors, supported by their campus administrators, who lead their students to conduct undergraduate research each summer. Those who have worked with this program from its inception have evidenced the growing strength of Asian Studies programs among the colleges who are members of ASIANetwork. This is evident in the growing sophistication of research proposals, and the increasing breadth of research being conducted in a larger number of countries throughout East and Southeast Asia, and also by the strength of mentoring and the stronger credentials of student applicants. We have reason to be optimistic about the future of Asian Studies in the United States.

A consortium of around 160 North American colleges, ASIANetwork strives to strengthen the role of Asian Studies within the framework of liberal arts education to help prepare succeeding generations of undergraduates for a world in which Asian societies play prominent roles in an ever more interdependent world.